


lovely

by OfSpideRs_aNdRiddLes



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Hanahaki Disease, Hope, M/M, Poems, i came here to attack you and honestly i'm having such a good time right now, lyrical influences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 08:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18220418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfSpideRs_aNdRiddLes/pseuds/OfSpideRs_aNdRiddLes
Summary: Isn't it lovely, all alone?heart made of glass, mind of stone.tear me to pieces, skin to bonehello, welcome home.





	lovely

_ Isn’t it lovely, all alone? _

_ Heart made of glass, my mind of stone _

_ Tear me to pieces, skin to bone _

_ Hello, welcome home. _

 

\-- 

 

Yellow. 

His love was yellow. 

A rich, beautiful thing. The colour of passing stars, of his sun back home, of the uniform he adored. 

The uniform that made him feel like he found home after seventeen years of relentless work to get himself into that blue-black of space, and five years wandering its vast recesses.

He wouldn’t trade it for the world.

 

He has begun checking out at times, mind far from where his body resides. 

Wandering eyes and clumsy tongue kept him alienated.

Enigmatic child that he was, he was adored by those around him.

Sometimes, it wasn’t enough.

 

\--

 

“Good morning, Ensign,” the Captain greeted as Pavel slid into his seat at the Navigator’s position, next to the pilot from Beta shift. The glaring white interior of the ship assaulted his bleary eyes, no matter how accustomed to it he was. 

“Good morning, Keptin.” he chirped back, wincing as his voice came out with a morning gravel.

The sound of the ship’s alert for the commencement of Alpha shift sounded, and Chekov felt his rebellious heart skip a beat. He busied himself tapping through the controls, rechecking his calculations, however impeccable they were, to shove away the way his stomach did aerials at the sight of his friend smiling down at him when he took his seat next to him.

He made sure to get up at least an hour before Sulu did just because of this. It hurt to see him, but he was but a moth to his light, he couldn’t get enough of him, even if it killed him.

 

Taking a deep breath, he mentally prepared himself for the rest of his shift.

 

\--

 

Returning to his quarters, jointly connected with Sulu’s via the bathroom, he felt a budding itch in his throat and chest. Had been for hours. He barely made it to the toilet before he started retching, his lungs on fire, throat feeling like a battlefield where everyone was losing. His arms were shaking, weak all over. Pavel’s eyes were watering at the sheer force of his coughs, and when he opened his eyes as the fit passed, his head light, he caught his reflection on the blood permeated toilet water. Face paler than normal, eyes red, blood dribbling from his lips. 

What scared him the most was the singular yellow petal on the top of the liquid, blissfully unaware of the fear it brought the young man, as it drifted about. 

 

Shaking and clammy, Pavel pushed himself off of the floor, flushing the evidence of his unwellness away, and washing his face with cold water. Pausing, he entertained the notion of going down to the Med Bay, but discarded it immediately. There was no way he was going to forfeit his duties as navigator, not even for a day. His job meant everything to him. He did however compromise with himself to not strain himself by going down to the dining hall for dinner or lunch. 

 

Just when he was about to sit down and work on his tablet, calculations busied him enough to forget, he relied on them like an alcoholic relies on strong vodka or whiskey, a knock resonated throughout his room, coming from the bathroom. Knowing very well it was Sulu, he still decided to not answer, instead curling in on himself more and praying that the older man would leave. When he heard no continued knocking, he assumed that his prayers had been answered. What he was not expecting was for the distinctive  _ beep _ of the override and his door opening.

Looking up, eyes wide, he met the sheepish gaze of his friend. 

Sulu’s face went red as he realised that Pavel was awake and not asleep or vacant as he had expected, but cleared his throat as an attempt to justify his breaking-in.

“Hey Pavel! Was just looking for you.” he laughed uneasily.

“Well, I am here, Sulu.” Pavel said cautiously, not wanting to aggravate his throat, despite it feeling better at the moment.

“Good, good…” Sulu drifted off. “Ahem, well, I was wondering if you’d like to fence? Kirk is busy boning Spock right now so he’s, well, preoccupied.” Chekov’s face went bright red at the crude turn of phrase, the blush creeping towards his ears and across his cheeks. Sulu laughed at the sight, a bright, melodic sound that bounced off of the walls of the room. 

“Thank you for that image, Sulu. I hate eet.” came a reply muffled by the palms of his hands covering the entirety of his fire-engine red face.

“So?” Sulu ventured, shrugging his left shoulder lower than his right. Pavel sighed.

“Alright, let me get my things.”

 

An anecdote about Klingon rose varieties and a few tasteless jokes later, the two men arrived at the Rec room, putting down bags and stretching. They went back and forth fencing for the better half of the hour, and wrestled after that. Sulu hit the mat with an  _ oomph _ of protest, Pavel above him, pinning his forearms above his head, straddling his chest. They stayed like that for a moment, breathing heavily, sweating from the activity. Sulu attempted a laugh at his position, but it came out as a wheeze due to the slight figure on his chest. Hearts beating fast, eyes locked. They were out of time, and yet frozen in it. Underneath the slight odor of sweat was the intertwined aroma of their respective colognes, deep and rich paring with a lighter, crisp one. As if spring and autumn found each other, as if the ground opening for the rain impregnated the scent of cloves and the nutmeg from tea. 

The  _ USS Enterprise _ dimmed interior lights for the night shift, the Rec centres lights going from a clinical white to a diluted grey-blue.

Pavel was the first to shatter the silence.

“I believe I won this time, Sulu. Eet has been over the count of three.” he breathed, not looking away from the warm brown eyes of the man beneath him, drowning without protest.

Sulu said nothing. He was utterly transfixed, the slightly freckled man above him cast in the dark light making him look surreal. Like one of the holograms of the movies from centuries prior on earth, black and white but so full of colour. So full of life. 

Pavel did not move either, he couldn’t. He could breathe, here. In this moment. His lungs enthralled in the weightlessness they found. 

This was his friend. He couldn’t do this to him. He was content to live out the rest of his life by his side, no matter what his role was. ‘Friend’ was okay.

Shaking his head to escape the spell he was snared in so willingly, Pavel shifted back to his heels, feet framing Sulu’s waist, before gracefully crouching up and then stepping to the side, his years in ballet training even the most subconscious of his movements. He extended a hand to his companion, Sulu taking it gratefully as he was gently pulled to his feet.

They traveled back to their quarters mostly in silence, the lulls in conversation heavy but not completely uncomfortable.

When parting ways at their respective doors, Sulu clapped Pavel on his upper arm and it killed the Ensign a little bit more.

 

\--

 

It wasn’t even four in the morning on the Ship’s log when Pavel found himself back in the bathroom, coughing up blood into the shower. Just when he thought he was finished, he coughed once more, the effort straining the inside of his lungs down to the pit of his abdomen, shaking from the effort, when something heavy made its way into his mouth from his throat. Spitting it out, he found a budding yellow flower. A carnation.  _ Refusal, disappointment. _

 

\--

 

The next day, Pavel took a sick day. 

His first ever.

He couldn’t even leave his bed.

McCoy came up to visit him and do a few tests.

No matter how many times he tried to protest, Pavel could not escape the screening, or the inevitable look of horror and mourning in the older man’s face when the scans came back.

It was a rare condition, not a lot of knowledge on it, not many ways to treat it let alone cure it. He would need entirely new lungs, or he could relieve his burden. Or, he could let it be. Let it progress to the point where the roots in his lung tissues ate away at the organs, where the blossoms climbed into his throat, where the petals were his every exhale. Where he would reek of flora, skin of porcelain, eyes glassy and pink, where he would lose his voice and sink into a vegetative state until his body gave up, his mind in torment.

He asks for painkillers, and an inhaler to pretend the coughing fits were symptoms of asthma, and for discretion. His three wishes.

 

Next shift, he comes in early as usual. Five minutes until the start of his time, Sulu walks in, looking slightly worried but otherwise… happy. He expressed his concern over Pavel’s absence the day prior, but the younger man could tell in the way he smiled softly to himself when lost in thought two feet from himself that he was a dead man walking. A time bomb. The only difference between the man and the weapon being that the weapon would go out with a bang, the man resolving to go quietly.  _ Despair _ . 

 

Venturing into the torment of the cafeteria, silent, Pavel sat by himself, back to the wall, overlooking the room from a silent corner, window into the stars he loved so much to his right. He stared out into them, wondering what it would be like to simply exist separate. He was terrified of the inevitable fate that awaited him with it’s silent jaws agape only for him. Even more so he was terrified of being alive, and the implications life brought to him. To live is to die. To accept that the time one spends in existence is limited, and to accept that what they choose to do with their time, is their ultimatum. The stars had none of that in the way organic beings did. Their time was seemingly endless, the witnesses to their ends few and far, far in between. They had no concerns, no worries. 

In a way, Pavel was jealous of this.

They kept to themselves and were adored, their light captured in art and in poems and in memories. 

The ensign’s left cheek was graced with a lone tear of pain. 

 

Nobody the wiser.

 

\--

 

Sleep eluded him, the painkillers never enough to numb both the pain of body and pain of mind. 

He stares at the stars more, seeking silent refuge in their brilliance against the inky purple black of the nebula they were passing through. The nebula bearing no name but in his mind  _ Svetlana _ . 

He had been growing silent for weeks, the stinging heat of his lungs twinging uncomfortably through his chest when he tried to speak more than a few sentences. 

Being near Sulu helped. 

The man was frequently busy.

 

His golden sense of comfort. 

 

He didn’t notice Pavel falling.

He was the sun.

And Pavel his Icarus.

 

\--

 

Sulu asked him over a message if Pavel would like to sparr again. 

Lungs be damned, Pavel went.

It was a disaster to say the least. Pavel was weak from days of horrid sleep, shortness of breath, and malnutrition, forgetting to eat at least twice a day.

Hikaru frowned, but didn’t push. He went back to Pavel’s room with him and told him that if he wanted anything, needed anything, he was there for him. He was met with a sad smile and a hushed laugh.

“What I need eez what I want, but I am afraid I am unable to ask. Thank you though, dear friend.” the smile didn’t reach his eyes, the orbs fractured with sadness, his face even paler than before, veins beginning to manifest beneath skin.

“I hate to see you like this Pavel. But if you’re sure, I should get going, there’s someone I need to meet.” the last part of this was accompanied by a small smile ghosting his lips. Pavel smiled as best he could, but he was already losing hope.

 

\--

 

The coughing became unbearable. 

He stayed back from his duties for the day.

Instead, he was seated in the bathtub, fully clothed save for his bare feet and black tee shirt in place of his uniform. Hugging his knees to his chest, trying to ground himself, to keep himself from falling off of reality and into something else.

He hadn’t bothered cleaning up the blood. Hadn’t bothered moving the fully-bloomed yellow carnations. Their crinkled petals flecked with drying blood, the copper smell tangling the smell of the flowers faintly. Yellow, delicate petals juxtaposing the harsh meaning of the flowers, the fatality of their coming into being. 

Turning on the water, he stopped the tap flowing once the cold water was halfway up the side of the tub, the flowers floating atop it, red seeping through the frigid liquid in the way watercolours in water jars do. It was intrancing, the mere aesthetics of the sight intoxicating. 

Coughing again, worse than before, four more carnations joined the mix, the water now saturated with his blood, a distinct light red, not quite pink. The pop of the yellow flowers lazily circling around his knees.

He doesn’t mind the sight much anymore, too dull to his own tragedy to realise the depth of it.

He closes his eyes.

 

\--

 

“Pavel?  _ Shit _ , Pavel, wake up buddy, come on.” Sulu frantically tried to get Chekov to wake up, the sight of his blood in the bathtub greatly disturbing his stomach. Swallowing down bile, he patted his friend’s cheeks to check to see what was wrong despite the obvious. That’s when he saw them.

An almost full bouquet of separate carnation blossoms swirling about the tub, in a despicably delicate way, unawares of their circumstance.

Pavel’s eyes fluttered open, glancing over to Sulu before coughing a bit more, blood dribbling down the side of his mouth.

“Sulu, vwhy are you here?” his accent becoming thicker with his diluted consciousness. 

“Pavel you are  _ bleeding out _ , why? What’s wrong? What can I do? I’m going to get McCoy--” 

“Don’t-” Pavel wheezed, coughing a bit more, “Please, don’t.”

Sulu was crying at this point, panicking. 

 

“Pavel you’re  _ dying _ .”

 

“I am alright with that.”

 

Hikaru sobbed at those five words. The hotness behind his eye sockets, nose running, skin flushed from his tears.

 

“Why?” He whispered, voice breaking, whispered.

“There eez nothing left for me.” Pavel whispered.

“Sulu, please”

 

His hand found Pavel’s in the contaminated water, the cold numbing his fingers, and he grabbed his friend’s hand,  _ hard _ . Pavel’s fingers were pruned from the exposure to cold water, and slightly swollen from the liquid, feeling of ice.

“It’s Hikaru, Pavel.” the words fell from his tongue like leaves from a tree, gently, fatally.

“Hikaru,” Pave repeated, smiling softly. His eyes were closed now, head back against the wall, chin up.

“Can I ask a favour?” 

“Anything, Pavel,  _ God _ please stay with me.” his head rested on the ledge of the tub, knees complaining at his hunched position but his mind too numb with alarm to really feel it until after.

 

“Kiss me?” 

 

Hikaru began crying in earnest now. His best friend was dying of a sickness they couldn’t cure, and at this point, even  _ him _ , the man who caused it, could not fix it.

He leaned forwards, reaching over Pavel’s prone figure to grasp the side of his head gently and tilt his face up to meet his own, foreheads pressed together.

The tears fell heavily from his eyes in a torrent to rival a hurricane.

 

“Please” Pavel said, the word simple, and laced with longing, pain.

 

Their lips met, blood against tears.

Salt and copper.

 

Body shaking with sobs, Hikaru leaned back and ran his hands through Pavel’s hair, hoping for something, anything.

That Pavel would be alright.

That he could love him enough to save him.

 

“I can’t breathe…”

The words ghosted from the smaller man’s lips. 

Hikaru bowed his head.

Another wave assaulting his tear ducts.

 

“Pavel?”

 

“Pavel?”

 

The silence was deafening.

 

“Shh, Pavel, it’s going to be alright,” Hikaru whispered, voice shattering. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Oh  _ God _ , Pavel.”

“It’s alright, I’m here.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ve got you.”

 

“I’ve got you.”

  
  


“I’m right here.”

  
  
  


“It’s going to be alright.”

  
  


\--

 

The bridge was quieter.

Hikaru sought refuge in his work. 

He left his partner. He couldn’t look at him, knowing that because he loved him, he couldn’t save Pavel.

It was Sulu’s fault, in his mind.

 

The funeral was a few days later.

McCoy broke down trying to speak. To say  _ something _ .

Kirk looked as if he had aged all the years Pavel was supposed to have left.

Uhura remained silent, eyes glossy for days.

Spock didn’t even try to speak.

 

Sulu walked up to the podium.

He took a shuddering breath.

Visions of a small man, dressed in black, skin tinged with his own diluted blood, surrounded in yellow carnations.

He walked away.

  
  


When days got longer, he would sit by the window of the  _ Enterprise _ , and watch the stars.

Drawing a sense of comfort in that Pavel was among the very things he loved so, that he raced after at such a young age.

 

_ Do not go gentle into that good night, _

_ Old age should burn and rave at close of day; _

_ Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _

 

_ Though wise men at their end know dark is right, _

_ Because their words had forked no lightning they _

_ Do not go gentle into that good night. _

 

_ Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright _

_ Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, _

_ Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _

 

_ Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, _

_ And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, _

_ Do not go gentle into that good night. _

 

_ Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight _

_ Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, _

_ Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _

 

_ And you, my father, there on the sad height, _

_ Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. _

_ Do not go gentle into that good night. _

_ Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _

 

He slipped away from his crew, but Pavel never lost the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> referencing the song "Lovely" by Billie Eilish and Khalid  
> poem at end, "Do not go gentle into that good night" from Dylan Thomas
> 
> comments would be lovely  
> xospdrs


End file.
